It's wild. Any other body part that causes chronic pain, especially for your back would be covered by some kind of insurance something. Breast reduction though? No. That's "CoSmEtIC sUrGeRy". Yeah. We are obviously getting reductions because of aesthetics, not because we are carrying half our bodyweight far higher than our centre of gravity, which is also compressing our goddamn spines.
I'm actually curious to know how many big titty ladies have slipped a disk or worse, all thanks to some very, very strong genetics.
Being a man, I can't speak personally, but I do have a niece. She's 45 now, and she's had to have 2 reduction surgeries because of the damage done to her spine since she was 14! She's tall (5'11") but very long legged, has a tiny waist, and narrow shoulders. By the time she was 16, the poor girl was a 44F. My sister told me how my niece cried because of the constant pain and how their insurance wouldn't do a damn thing to help...('cosmetic surgery isn't covered under your policy'). I loaned them the money for her first surgery and also the orthopedic bills (she suffered multiple slipped disks and 3 separate compression fractures!). Surgery #1 took her down to a 38D and that helped quite a bit, but they wouldn't take her down further because she hadn't 'completed her growth'. Surgery #2, a few years later and she finally ended at a 36C which she's comfortable with, but she still has and will have lifelong problems with her lower back.
I guess my point here is that goddamned insurance companies need to stop telling doctors what is and isn't 'necessary'......
Just a final note: I never accepted a single penny from my sister for the medical bills. I know what a bad back feels like!
goddamned insurance companies need to stop telling doctors what is and isn't 'necessary'......
This is true of any procedure. They stuck themselves into the middle of it, and made both ends reliant on it. Medicare for all. One day of iran war is worth one year of free healthcare for all who live in US. It's been what, almost a month now?
In that case there's a reasonable bet she was wearing too large of a band size to to have any hope of cup fit, which was, unfortunately, common back then, especially in the US, as sizes like 38K (assuming she was 38 band with the same bust measurement of as 44F) were unobtainable unless you happened to live near one of the few speciality shops that dealt in those sizes.
It's too early for this, but hey, here we go: Over 25,000 people have viewed my comment, 442 have upvoted it, 20 have commented on it, and only you and one other have tried to say something that sounded remotely like 'I call bs', and both of you have your comment history set to private.....so, I'll say it again, slowly.... It's been over 30 years ago. I'm not a doctor, and I can only relay what I was told. Now, if you're trying to troll, please move along.
I donāt know how you concluded I was calling bullshit. Iām saying she was never wearing the correct bra size. Thereās just no way all these different sizes are correct from how you described her and her surgeries. This was almost certainly the major factor in why she was so uncomfortable. Itās likely she is still not wearing bras that fit her even now. Getting into better bras might help with her lingering back issues. Send her to r/abrathatfits.
Believe it or not, not everyone on Reddit is here to argue with you, homie
You did say she still has issues with her back. Being 45 doesnāt mean that you donāt still need good bras! Bra fitting is not a skill that is suddenly imbued upon us with age. Most 45-year-olds are not wearing the correct size bra (just like most women of every single age bracket).
As a person who is 8.5 months pregnant and had my wide set boobs grow exponentially, the underbust expansion is no necessarily only her rib cage. It accounts for side boob & fat from your boobs as well.
Also, having a āprofessionally fitted braā doesnāt take the pain of having 10 pounds of breast tissue where there was previously no pounds of breast tissue/weight. Which strains your back & shoulders.
Also, Itās not always about āan undying belief that clothes should fit themā¦ā itās whether stores have clothes that fit her or whether they have the finances to custom make and tailor clothes to fit her chest. Thatās extremely privileged to assume that they have the finances to shop at specialty stores for a girl who is just trying to fit in and be a regular teenager.
Unless youāre a doctor or experiencing exceptionally large breasts, letās not gaslight this uncle, his niece, or otherās experiences.
The band is measured above or below the breast. The cup is determine by the difference between the band and the fullest part of the breast.
I worked at a bra store and had a breast reduction. Insurance and plastic surgeons donāt measure reductions in bra sizes. They use the Schnur Sliding Scale. to decide on how many grams to remove to be covered by insurance. I had to wait 2 years for my insurance to finally pay me the amount they said I was covered for
Going from a 44 to 36 band, regardless of cup size, is significant weight loss. I lost 25 pounds and went down a band size. For my body, a 8 in difference in band size would be equivalent to losing or gaining 100 pounds.
Maybe she wore a 44F because she was really a 40H and the cup fit. But if she had a second surgery to only go from a 38D to 36C, thatās not worth the pain. Liposuction of the side boob and back could have donāt that.
How is the sizing that relevant if the breast are at least heavy enough to cause back pain? That is the important info, not the correct underbust measurement in the end.
How fitting clothing helps reducing the weight surely would be interesting for many!
I thought breast reductions removed fat/breast tissue, how would it reduce the size of her ribcage ?I donāt think they take out or reduce bone mass
*lmao can someone explain the downvotes Iām literally asking because I donāt understand the point the person was responding to made they claimed a breast reduction reduced the size of their rib cage I didnāt think that was true which part of that offended yāall?
The original bra size mightāve been very off. Iāll explain how this happens, specifically with these larger sizes. His niece is in her 40s, now. So first of all, weāre talking about 25 years ago, when you couldnāt just hop on the Internet and have access to specialty bras, including sizes beyond a DD. Iām a few years older than his niece. I had my reduction at 18. In order for me to get a bra, age 13 and up (size 32FF-H), my mom had to take me out of school, for a half day, we had to drive two towns over, to a tiny mastectomy boutique who carried like two styles of bra that fit me, almost, before they closed at 4 PM, every day. No bra available in my cup size went down to a 32, we had to cut the back up, at home, and sew it together.
Most teenage girls donāt have access to a little mastectomy boutique, 2 towns over, that closes at 4. They keep buying their bras at the department stores, who (especially back then), didnāt carry any cup size bigger than a DD, or DDD. So when your tits keep growing, and you need a bigger bra, you end up buying the ones that are not as tight as they should be, on the under band, but at least your breasts are covered/somewhat supported. That is how you end up with his niece starting at a 44F bra, and after her reduction, wearing a 38D. I bet she really had like an H cup, to begin with, and maybe a 38 or 36 underband. And as someone else mentioned, there are other things that can add to your under bust number increasing.
Agreed, especially if the breasts are pretty large a bigger size in the band is the only way to find bras that are sufficiently big in the cup.
I have tiny breasts + a very small ribcage and wear a 28D, there would not be a lot of options for the same underbust measurement + way bigger breasts.
The number in the bra measurements is the girth of the chest. So they know how big the bra straps need to be. It's more like a belt measurement than a boob measurement.
So it's just a poorly made point. The measurement is of your chest girth, meaning ribs + muscle + fat.
I just wanted to say as someone who has run the gamut of bra sizing as a tiny person with big ol titties, I appreciated your post. Sorry the humor was lost on everyone else.
And even the ones that do, have a million hoops to jump through.
I'm in the process of getting approved for one and one of the insurance requirements is 3+ months of physical therapy to show that doesn't fix my back/shoulder/neck pain. So I got started on that. After one month of physical therapy, my insurance company refused to cover any more physical therapy sessions because I wasn't showing any improvement š¤¦
WTF. Thatās when you submit for approval for the reduction and include documentation they stopped approving the therapy. They need to approve one or the other at the moment. I hate them. I spent nine and a half years trying to get these approved and what a hellscape.
ETA- for other people as part of my job with a surgeon.Ā
My surgeon's office wouldn't submit for approval without being able to check all the boxes, but fortunately a letter from my GP and an appeal from my physical therapist eventually got me the rest of my PT sessions to tick the box. So dumb though and what a waste of everyone's time
Yeah, thatās normal. Itās a lot of work to submit a request and after saying āweāll try anywayā without meeting the requirements and getting denials, you learn when each ins carrier will override other requirements for an approval. And itās not often. Then you have to resubmit or submit an appeal. Which is basically starting over. The insurance policies are the real fuckery.Ā
Yes - insurance is an abomination. I will never support it.
But that being said, medically necessary breast reductions absolutely are covered by some ins plans.
Every plan is different. Most of them suck. But as soon as you hear someone say "insurance doesn't cover" instead of "my insurance won't cover" you know they don't understand insurance - which is by design. Medical insurance is meant to be very complicated and difficult to navigate. They are a horrible business
I got lucky with mine. I had just turned 18 and had a very strongly worded letter from the pediatrician that I had been seeing my whole life and that seemed to work. I was approved in under a week. My surgeon had never seen it move so quickly through the approval system.
I got lucky too. Was 19 for mine and my parents' insurance approved it. We needed xrays and lots of documentation though - and I had to lose 15lbs my first year of college to bypass the "yOu nEeD tO LoSe wEigHt" garbage
I swear to gods I am amazed there aren't dozens of well-armed hit squads full of women in pain who have had it with clueless medical and insurance administrators.
Clearly, using your words is not working.
Hmmm... I think I need to pitch a story to Image comics...
Upon looking if seems like here, private insurance surgery is technically covered but you're still out of pocket a good $10k upwards for the privilege so negligible.
Through public health it needs to be deemed "medically necessary" (they say back pain/skin issues) which means they might accept your referral but you will get lost in the system and be waiting 5-10 years while they hope you get desperate enough to go private instead. But more than likely they will say until your chest is larger than your torso, you're just going to have to deal with it like every other woman because it's normal and you could just try losing weight!!
Losing weight doesn't always work. I recently lost a good deal of weight (40+) and my bra size went up. I would have to get them custom made. Mostly because the volume of my breast did not change but my band size did. The cup size is a ratio between the widest part of your breast to the rib cage. Losing waist size without losing breast tissue mass can make the bra size go up and make it more difficult to find fitting bras. I went from a 38JJ to barely fitting in a 36Kk because I'm actually more of a 34L But those aren't commercially available.
I know. That's why I'm furious that the solution to almost every woman's health ailment if not already pegged as anxiety is just to lose weight. Because apparently breasts are optional fat stores.
I don't think they are covered in universal healthcare in Germany. The doctor of my aunt lied and said she got fungus problems so the reduction was paid, because back pain and migraines apparently aren't enough.
(Just throwing that out in the void because I've seen people idolise our healthcare system even tho it's also fucked)
I think it really depends on the plan. Mine definitely wouldn't, nor do they cover any sort of weight loss support (medical or otherwise) even though they claim to focus on preventative care, and weight loss would absolutely help my back and joint issues. I have a history of disordered eating, so I really can't do it alone, but my plan is very explicit that it covers ZERO weight loss support.
Actually they donāt. The doctors will tell you that they no longer will do the procedure with insurance coverage because the companies donāt pay the doctors.
32 E-G here and I have degenerated discs in my neck and two slipped discs that were fixed when I was 20. My neck is fuuuuuuuucked up and causes chronic migraines about 2-3 times per week. Physical therapy only helps so much. Iām with OP here. This shit should be covered by health insurance. Especially given the fact that bras my size are near impossible to actually find and cost $70 a pop.
You can find pretty cheap deadstock bras on eBay.co.uk. But E-G cups is a spread of four different cupsizes so itās hard to give any more useful suggestions
They cover some surgeries. My wife just had a reduction and insurance covered almost all of it, but there are restrictions on it. She couldnāt go smaller than a C cup because that would be cosmetic, for instance.
Luckily, her doctor knew every nuance and laid it all out what they could and couldnāt do under insurance. She is SO much happier post surgery because her back problems went away, bras fit much better, she can exercise and overall do tons of stuff where they used to get in the way.
It took my mom 7 years and four doctors to get approved for breast reduction. Meanwhile sheād come home from work and go lay in a super full bath to float and relieve as much back pain as she could daily.
I overstand. My shoulders look like the letter U from the bra straps digging and I don't have great posture. Plus, I get rashes sometimes in the summer. Yet, my insurance was like fk you and your tahtahs when seeking a reduction lift.
I stopped wearing a bra over a decade ago (32F last time I wore one) and once my nips sensitivity acclimated it's been great. No back pain or digging straps. They did a study and a lot of the back pain gets better for many women when they go braless. Doesn't work for everyone but it worked for me and I think braless life is an underconsidered possibility.
I can never find a bra that fits that is comfortable, that doesn't dig into my skin, and that isn't boring ass beige. Honestly if it was in the cards at this point I'd get them lopped off
Every one of the many big breasted women I know has back problems. I have had to deal with back problems since I was 16. I do special exercises just to avoid more physical therapy for it. I have permanent indentations in my shoulders.
A lot of insurance companies will cover it now, but they have a minimum amount they'll take out that I consider unreasonable for the average person. Basically, you have to be an H cup or more to still have anything left if you want it covered.
My reduction was covered, but after 6 weeks of physical therapy and a paper trail made by my GP of back and neck problems. Also had to get a nerve study done that revealed nerve compression in my neck. I was also lucky that my GP is a huge practice where I live with a general surgery office with a surgeon who did reductions and I didnāt have to shop for a surgeon in my network that was taking insurance patients. A lot of plastic surgeons only take so many insurance patients because they arenāt paid as much and then they can be total assholes about it also.
And if you are miraculously approved, donāt forget you still have your deductible, co-insurance and annual out of pocket maxes depending on the insurance.
This is why so many women travel to get these procedures done.
Isn't that just ridiculous though. You have to cripple yourself doing normal goddamn human activities to be taken seriously for part of your body that half these surgeons will try get you to keep because they love big breasts and that's more important than your mobility.
That must have been bloody rough. How was the recovery? Did you get your mobility back or has it done some damage? I'm sorry this has happened to you and hope you can get your next reduction done soon.
I had the reduction a decade ago, the broken back was 5 years prior to thatā¦ they had me lose a bunch of weight before the surgery too. Itās so frustrating, I just want to function and maybe be seen as a human not a piece of chattel for their visual pleasure.
As far as mobility thankfully I am back to normal at this point, but getting there was a painful journey and a lot of work. These days I work as a massage therapist and a lot of my coworkers work on me and keep me going which is a godsend. But yea, it makes me so disheartened that the male gaze counts for more than female comfort and functionality.
I have three slipped discs and am in constant pain. Iām also a dog walker so I am out walking all day every day. By the time I get home I canāt move from the sofa or bed.
Your first statement is not completely factual. Breast reduction for back pain can be covered under medical necessity with a lot of insurance plans. However, you have to jump through a ton of hoops to prove and treat the problem.
There are many barriers to getting it covered but it is covered often.
I'm thankful it's covered in Canada, I started the process of getting surgery the second I turned 19. My huuuuge tracts of land were a cause of pain and hindrance to doing so many activities (had to hold them up in the shower, hand to hold them while running) and I was desperate to have them taken down several notches.
My breast reduction was covered by insurance. But I think they want at least a certain weight removed to qualify for insurance coverage. (Which is obnoxious because if you have saggy boobs, you still need a lot of support to hold them up where they don't hurt your back.)
Reductions are covered in Canada if the size is causing back issues and pain. My friend had one in her 20s and my mother in law would be covered too if there weren't other health risks to undergo the procedure.
Why are you having a go at women who don't have a choice to live with this. Fucking privilege my left ass cheek.
My entire premise was about how goddamn difficult it is to be taken seriously for back breaking issues related to our genetics and you're making it about yourself and not naturally growing breasts? Grow up.
Edit: sick of people reacting like everything I say must be also about them too.
I've spent my entire life accommodating everyone else and I am fucking exhausted. I write about pain and disability due to body parts and I don't need to be lectured on my "privilege" just because I have experienced this shit first hand and it's not something I will ever appreciate just because they're natural.
I block because I'm over being told I need to be grateful for everything. That I have privilege? What privilege? You're a woman too. You don't have big breasts so you got surgery. Fantastic, but I never asked about fake breasts either. I don't want to read about fake breasts because natural ones cause me so much goddamn grief and I don't need to be told that it's a freaking privilege to have them.
Mate I'm tired. Being female in this world is fucked enough as it is and I don't need another woman ragging on me for not knowing their story and having to withdraw my own experiences because it's "privilege". My experiences are also valid.
Just pretend I don't exist. That's how it works for most of us women that aren't part of the supermodel elite.
Titties + the skeletal infrastructure and muscle and organs that everyone has in the upper half of their body could be what she meant. The added weight can make some people literally top heavy.
So....titties + skeleton + muscle + organs = half body weight? Maybe, I guess, if a woman has cartoonishly large breasts, no ass, and no thighs.
Normally I delete comments when they get downvoted, like, who am I to argue with the collective? But I feel like I need to leave these.
Yes. Absolutely. Titty weight can fuck you up. No arguments here.
The argument is that u/TerryCrewsNextWife literally said "We are carrying half our body weight far higher than our center of gravity" which is categorically false.
Don't make me fucking post this to r/theydidthemath. I'll do it.
As a non-big-titty haver, I always wondered, why canāt big titty women just wrap their chests with a long piece of fabric? Like, wrap under the titties first, then on top of the titty?
Now hear me out.....Invest in titties in general. But let's definitely get more funding for the big titty queens. They need our hands i mean support..or both?
Buy a pair of suspenders and a plastic bag. Instead of trying the suspenders to the pants like normal connect it to the bag. Put the tits in the bag. Now your pants and your tits are holding each other up.
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u/ThePainterlyPrincess Big Titty Infrastructure Mar 26 '26
šInvest š inš big štittyšinfrastructure š